


love at first sight (every single time)

by Sixthlight



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5 Times, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Inspired By Tumblr, M/M, Mentioned Andy/OFC, Roleplay, Walk Into A Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28859181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: Five times well-meaning strangers interrupted Joe and Nicky playing 'handsome stranger picks me up in a bar', and one time it played out exactly the way they wanted it to.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 27
Kudos: 583





	love at first sight (every single time)

**Author's Note:**

> A Tumblr team effort: [original post/tags from vrabia](https://vrabia.tumblr.com/post/640678791169146880/absolutely-love-nickys-20th-century-commitment-to), [the five different strangers from onyxbird](https://onyxbird.tumblr.com/post/640681621380644864/sixth-light-vrabia-vrabia-absolutely-love), prose from yr humble correspondent. Inspired, of course, by the Joe/Nicky cover for [the upcoming comic anthology](https://www.polygon.com/comics/2021/1/18/22233030/the-old-guard-sequel-tales-through-time-anthology-writers-artists).

1\. When Nicky went to the bar to get another drink, the woman in the next booth bent around to whisper urgently to Joe. “Hey. Is everything okay? I don’t wanna be rude, but you just - uh, you’re tearing up a little, and some of those lines were kind of - what I’m trying to say is, do you need an excuse to get out of here?”

Joe took a minute to process what she’d said; he’d been too busy thinking about how infinitely lucky he was, to have a perfect husband who was willing to play this game of picking Joe up in a bar. “What? Uh. No. No, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Thank you, though, that’s very kind of you to check in.”

Nicky came back with a quiet smirk, another drink, and another perfectly terrible line, but it was hard to get into the spirit of it after that; they left the bar fifteen minutes later.

*

2\. “Let me get you another drink,” Nicky said to the dark-eyed man he’d found at this slightly seedy bar. Over in another corner, he could see Andy rolling her eyes extravagantly. He ignored her. “What will it be? I’d love to see your mouth wrapped around…a straw.”

“Surprise me,” Joe murmured, with bedroom eyes that should probably be illegal in public.

Nicky sauntered off to the bar feeling very good about how their little game was going, but as he picked up the drinks and turned to go back, he was halted by a hand on his arm. It was a woman sitting at the bar; she had a crown of cornrow braids and was wearing Doc Martens and a plaid shirt, so - as they were in the United States - Nicky was reasonably sure she wasn’t about to hit on him.

“Listen,” she said. “You’re having amazing luck with that guy over there - good hunting, by the by - and I’m trying to work up the courage to go and talk to _her_.” She nodded towards Andy. “Any tips?”

“As a matter of fact,” Nicky said, because he didn’t mind doing Andy or this woman a good turn, but by the time he made it back to Joe the ice in their drinks had started to melt.

“Who exactly are you trying to get laid tonight?” Joe said, a little snottily; the mood had clearly been killed for him.

“Well, I hear you’re a sure thing,” Nicky said shamelessly. Joe snatched the drink out of his hand; Nicky wasn’t wrong in the end, of course, but it wasn’t how he’d wanted it to go.

*

3\. Joe leant on the bar and tried to look as lonely and approachable as possible. He didn’t make eye-contact with anybody in particular, because there was only one mysterious handsome stranger he really wanted to attract. But the point of the thing was to look like he wanted to get picked up; Nicky could never pull this game off otherwise. Once Joe had brought a book and Nicky had vacillated at the bar for a solid hour before just sitting down with him like normal.

“Quiet tonight,” said the barman. It didn’t seem that quiet to Joe, but he supposed nobody had ordered a drink in the past minute. “What brings you here?”

It took Joe a good five minutes to realise that the barman was hitting on _him._ Joe didn’t object, exactly; he wasn’t pushing it. But he was ready for Nicky to come and swoop in. Any second now.

Half an hour later, he got a text. _Sorry; he’s just enjoying himself too much. I can’t interrupt._

Joe sighed deeply, and used the text as an excuse to finish his drink and leave.

*

4\. They’d been coming by this place for a month now, doing the prep work for an undercover job; they were practically regulars. That was why, Nicky figured, Diego - a bona fide regular, who lived here - cornered him early in the evening.

“Hey, Nicolas,” he said. “Elena told me you had some incredibly smooth moves last week. I was wondering…there’s this guy who keeps coming in…any tips on what I should say to him?”

“Well, I can’t promise how successful it will be,” said Nicky, who hadn’t seriously tried flirting with anybody except Joe for a solid eight hundred years now, “but -”

Joe arrived half an hour later and draped himself across the bar; Nicky was just about to go over when Diego went up to him. Joe handled it well at first, but his expression got more and more confused. At one point, when Diego turned away, he mouthed “ _What the fuck”_ at Nicky over his shoulder, in Tounsi, so Nicky was the only one who'd get it. For the sake of Diego’s goodwill (he worked at the house they were trying to get into) Nicky couldn’t intervene; Joe had to extract himself gracefully on his own.

“What was that about?” Joe asked as they walked home.

“He told me he wanted help picking up this guy who kept coming in,” Nicky said. “He didn’t say it was you.”

“You would have done that anyway, even if he had.”

“Well….” Nicky said. “Perhaps.”

Joe scowled, then laughed, and planted a messy kiss high on his cheek.

*

5\. Joe had been waiting twenty minutes past when he’d expected Nicky to show up; he’d finished his drink, and was trying to decide whether to order another. Finally he spotted him. He was standing at the other end of the bar. There was a woman pressed in very close to him, head tilted flirtatiously. She barely came up to Nicky’s chin. Nicky kept trying to shuffle around her, and she wasn’t moving. The crush at the bar was too bad for him to just walk away.

Nicky had the wide-eyed look he got when presented with a situation he simply didn’t know how to respond to; it was only wide-eyed from Joe’s perspective, but Joe had been looking at Nicky’s face for nearly a thousand years, and knew panic when he saw it. (If he’d known it at the start, it would have saved them both a lot of misunderstandings, he reflected.)

Joe stood up and shouldered his way through the crowd. He got to Nicky just in time to hear the woman say “So what do you say - want to come and see my etchings?”

“Uh,” said Nicky, smiling very politely.

“Sorry, he’s all booked out this evening,” Joe said, and wrapped an arm around Nicky’s waist. “Come on, babe.”

The woman looked extremely cross. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, you’re excused,” Joe said cheerfully, and hauled his husband away.

“You’re my hero,” Nicky said. “She wouldn’t let me through, and all I could think of was all the lines I had saved up for you.”

“Tell them to me at home,” Joe said, feeling unutterably fond.

*

+1.

The cocktail bar had a menu that verged on the intimidating, rather than the merely impressive. Joe paged through it, trying to figure out if there was anything he wanted - or even recognised. Food and drink fashions changed so fast these days.

“Need a recommendation?” A tall green-eyed man leant on the bar next to him, closer than was really polite. He was pretty enough that Joe let it pass for now. “I’m partial to a Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against The Wall.”

It took absolutely everything Joe had not to break at that. “Oh, wow, is that…a thing?”

“Mmmm,” Nicky said, taking the menu out of Joe’s hands and flipping through it. He tapped on one page. “I’d be happy to show you.”

“Buy me a drink first, maybe.”

“We’re not talking about drinks?” Nicky raised his eyebrows.

Joe felt himself flush a little. “Uh, so, what’s a place like you doing in a - uh - of course we are.”

“But,” Nicky went on, “we could not talk about drinks. At my place. It’s just around the corner.”

“Oh, I definitely need a drink first,” Joe said, because he wasn’t letting Nicky speed-run the whole encounter quite _that_ fast.

“Of course,” Nicky said in a velvet-low voice, and went to order. The evening ended with Nicky’s legs wrapped around Joe’s waist and Nicky’s back up against their hotel room wall; it wasn’t slow or exactly comfortable, but it _was_ spectacular.

“I love getting picked up by strangers in bars,” Joe said happily, as they collapsed shaky-kneed onto the bed.

“I love picking up _one_ stranger,” Nicky said, grinning, and threw an arm over his husband.


End file.
